HOK, Leica Geosystems and Bricsys Announce 'Scan-to-BIM' Initiative

Today at the Bricsys 2019 Conference HOK, Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, and Bricsys announced a multi-year initiative to advance Scan-to-BIM technology.

The ultimate goal behind this initiative is for Bricsys, with its AI expertise, and Leica Geosystems, with its industry-leading reality capture solutions, to jointly develop technology that allows for the automatic conversion of point clouds into solid geometry. Through the use of machine learning techniques, these solids will be transformed into an intelligent BIM model, with automatic IFC classification. The automated conversion of point clouds to 'BIM-geometry' (a.k.a. ‘Scan-to-BIM’) is expected to accelerate today's time-consuming renovation and construction workflows, delivering significant productivity gains to Bricsys and Leica Geosystems customers.

With some of the most recognizable global renovation projects under their belt, industry guidance from HOK will deliver a solution that is customer-first and scalable, built to handle large commercial reality capture projects with ease. Greg Schleusner AIA, Director of Design Technology Innovation at HOK, stated, "At HOK, we use BIM tools to deliver our work. However, BIM has yet to deliver on its promises. Bricsys has shown us technologies that we are quite excited about, especially in the area of creating better, richer models in less time. The Scan-to-BIM initiative, in partnership with Bricsys and Leica Geosystems, is another step in our continued goal of enabling our project teams to focus on making quality design decisions vs. spending time manipulating data.”

In addition to a supercharged workflow, automated Scan-to-BIM technology will deliver significant efficiency gains during the execution phase of a new building project. More rapid BIM generation will help minimize approximations and allow for more exact quantity take-offs, delivering an increase in the accuracy of bulk material estimates to return significant improvements in pricing estimations and thus cost savings.

“We are dedicated to adding customer value to the BIM process with our advanced reality capture solutions,” said Fabio Ponzio, Hexagon’s Geosystems division vice president of building solutions. “In collaboration with our sister company, Bricsys, and long-time customer, HOK, we are working to change how firms approach re-fit and retro-fit projects with more effective and efficient workflows.”

"We are proud to announce that our BIM Alliance partners at HOK and our colleagues at Leica Geosystems have joined Bricsys in this initiative," said Erik De Keyser, Founder & CEO of Bricsys NV. "Our CAD innovations in the area of geometry creation and machine learning have brought strong value to this partnership. We are excited to explore an idealworkflow with HOK and work with Leica Geosystems to make it happen for our customers, worldwide."

Using a unique combination of industry insight, precision laser scanning techniques, and cutting-edge AI, the HOK, Leica Geosystems, and Bricsys consortium are committed to creating the next generation of Building Information Modeling workflows.